


If You Just Can't Do Me Right (Please, Do Me Wrong)

by liadan14



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Domestic Harry, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Talking About Trauma, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 17:41:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14878331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: Draco is fairly convinced he'll never be done atoning for his past. Pretty much no one seems to agree with that assessment.In which Harry and Draco stumble their way into an adult relationship and everyone talks a lot about the past even though they claimed they didn't want to.





	If You Just Can't Do Me Right (Please, Do Me Wrong)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started when I had a little marathon of all the movies a while back and started thinking about how screwed up kid's relationships with adults are in kid's movies. It deals heavily with processing the events in the Harry Potter books in terms of how I imagine they might, as adults. Therefore: See end notes for specific warnings, there are a few things that are very worth looking out for if talking about trauma - specifically the kinds that happen in the HP books, like character deaths and funny child abuse - are issues for you.   
> Title comes from a song called "Sugartown" by the Fratellis.

“I could,“ Draco cleared his throat nervously, “I could fix that for you, too, you know.”

“Huh?” Potter looked up from fiddling with the bent metal of his glasses. “Oh, no, uh, _oculus reparo_ , I can do this myself.” The twisted frame unbent slowly, following the seemingly unconscious movement of Potter’s wand as he traced it over his glasses.

“No,” Draco said hurriedly, “I mean, I can fix your eyesight. If you want.”

Potter stiffened. “There’s nothing wrong with my eyesight.” He jammed his glasses back onto his nose, and, for the first time since walking into St. Mungo’s A&E, stopped squinting.

Draco elected to say nothing for fear of laughing. Instead, he busied himself with preparing the tincture for Potter’s wounded arm. 

Potter began shifting awkwardly after less than a minute. “Can’t you just…cast a spell or something?”

“I could.” Draco shrugged. “But that’s a hex wound, yes? I’d really rather not throw more magic on it, it might just make things worse.”

Potter looked at him blankly.

“Remember in second year, when you lost all the bones in your arm?”

“Vividly.”

“I’d rather not do that.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.”

-

The next time Potter came in (two days later. Just two days. St. Mungo’s could run on the medical bills paid by the Auror department alone), he asked about it immediately even though his right kneecap was shattered and he had to be levitated in on a stretcher.

“Why’d you offer to ‘fix’ my eyesight?”

Draco paused. “Well, because I can. It’s my job to heal things. I can heal your eyesight.”

“But my eyesight’s not broken.” 

“No, but your glasses certainly get broken a lot. It seems inconvenient.”

Potter sighed. “Well, I don’t need my eyes fixed.”

Draco, at this point thoroughly distracted by the bits of cartilage peeking through the torn up flesh of Potter’s leg, said, “Your relative level of blindness is entirely your prerogative to decide, but please shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.”

Potter was suspiciously silent for the remainder of his treatment after that.

When he was free to go, he sat up slowly on the hospital bed, and looked at Draco carefully, for much too long a time. Draco would have begun shifting awkwardly from foot to foot if he hadn’t been raised to suppress all physical tics.

“When d’you get off shift?”

“Around about two hours ago. Then you came in.”

“Oh.” Potter blinked, surprised. “Aren’t there other healers?”

“None who had the time to see to you immediately.”

Potter’s mouth pursed into a little grimace. “I don’t mind waiting, you know. Everyone else does.”

“Well.” Draco said. “Still.”

“Anyway. Thanks, y’know, for patching me up and everything. Can I buy you a drink?”

“It is my job to ‘patch you up’.”

For a moment, Draco was struck by what must have been the reason for Potter being indulgently coddled by every grown-up to the point of not being expelled several dozen times. He really had amazingly expressive eyes, and they looked so large and crestfallen that Draco immediately added, “but it’s my personal policy to never turn down a free drink, so.”

A wide grin spread across Potter’s face. “Brilliant, I know just the place.”

‘Just the place’ was a muggle pub three blocks from St. Mungo’s.

“I know it’s not really your thing,” Potter said, handing Draco a lager, “but I’d just as soon not make the _Prophet_ tomorrow morning.”

Draco stared at him. “By ‘not my thing’, you mean…”

“Muggle.”

Draco sipped his beer – frothy, hoppy, and nothing as nice as the red wine he’d usually drink – and said at length, “I live in Muggle London, you know.”

“Why?”

“Not a lot of wizard flats renting out to Death Eaters.”

“You were acquitted.”

Draco looked up over the rim of his beer glass. “Thanks to you,” he said, and realized he’d gone a touch too coy and flirtatious when Potter flushed. “No, I do mean that,” he said, “I never thanked you at the time, and I know I’ve been nothing but a cunt to you.”

“I wouldn’t use that word,” Potter said, but he didn’t object to the content.

“A twat, then,” Draco said.

“I mean, you’re welcome and I think if you meant you were sorry that I accept your apology, but I’ve gotten a lot of lectures from Hermione about derogatory language and women’s genitalia.”

Draco laughed, surprised, and a bit of foam flicked off the top of his beer onto Potter’s nose. “I have never once thought about that, and she is absolutely right.”

Potter grinned. “I’m going to tell her you said that.”

Draco reached over, brushed the foam from Potter’s nose. “You’ve got some-“

“Look,” Potter said, catching his hand as he moved to draw it away, “I’m going to be very blunt with you. I know we never got on in school, but I think we’re both older and wiser now, and I’d quite like to take you home with me.”

“Oh,” Draco said.

“And it’s totally fine if that’s not something you’re interested in,” Potter rushed on, “I thought it’d be easier to ask outright, avoid any misunderstandings, but I’m not – that is, it’s all up to you. I just thought, well.”

“Oh,” Draco said.

“It’s just that, y’know, I’ve never had much time to think about all this…” Potter trailed off, making a vague gesture that Draco took to mean sex, or maybe orientation, or maybe Draco himself. “Stuff. And when I did get around to it, well.”

“Well?”

“When I saw you in St. Mungo’s the other day, I wanted to kiss you a lot more than I wanted to hex you. Until you said that thing about fixing my eyes.”

“What is it about the eyesight thing?” Draco asked.

Potter leaned back into his chair, relaxing a tad now he realized Draco wasn’t giving him a straight 'no', but rather playing for time. “I’ve always had shit eyesight,” he said. “When I was still living with my relatives, I was lucky to even get to see the optician and get my glasses adjusted. I can’t even tell you how often my glasses have gotten bent and broken and destroyed.”

He paused. Draco folded his hands together, trying to resist a smart comment.

“And I realize those all sound like excellent reasons to fix my eyes. I might, someday, when I get older and they get worse. It’s just…I dunno, magic can do so many things, but I worry sometimes that it…that I…” he sighed. “Remember in fourth year, when Hermione got her teeth shrunk?”

Draco grimaced. “You mean after I blew them up?”

Potter laughed. “That’d be it. I just thought, at the time, you know, she’s had those teeth all her life, and now she’s gone and changed them, she’s changing herself. But it’s been what, eight, nine years since then? And she still thinks of herself like, like she’s a bookworm with frizzy hair and buck teeth.”

Draco had seen Hermione Granger a few times since the end of the war. She dressed smartly, now, in stylish dress robes or muggle business suits, and kept her hair fairly contained in braids or buns. She still looked quite herself, but her fierce competence was on show for the world.

“I guess I figure,” Potter said, “that if it’s not going to change who I am, or how I see myself I don’t see why I should use magic to fix things I never thought were broken.”

“Practicality would be the argument,” Draco said, “but I think I see what you mean.”

“I think it could drive you mad,” Potter took a long sip of his beer, “using magic to fix yourself. I think it’s driven people mad.”

“You’re not wrong there.” Draco thought of Blaise Zabini’s mum and her (frankly alarming) breasts. “I suppose Muggles have nothing of the sort?”

“Oh, they do,” Potter said. “Plastic surgery, it’s called. A doctor cuts you open and fixes your bone structure, or makes women’s breasts larger. They even have a thing called laser eye surgery.”

Draco only barely suppressed his shudder at the thought of being cut open, but he had been trained in emergency first aid treatments for when there was no wand to hand, and he knew the theory was sound.

“It’s not as simple as all that, though,” Draco said thoughtfully, “I mean, Gamp’s law states that-“

“Oh, Merlin,” Potter said, “Hermione didn’t damage the natural order of the world or anything by letting part of her teeth go missing forever?”

“No, no, it’s not that fussy either. It’s just that I couldn’t fix your eyes if the potential to fix them wasn’t already there, you know. I’m not creating something out of nothing, I’m just improving some rods and cones and things. It’s not like a breast augmentation spell. You have to take the matter from somewhere.”

Potter shuddered.

“But if I catch your drift,” Draco said thoughtfully, “what you mean is that having glasses is part of who you are, and you don’t want to change that.”

Potter shrugged. “I’m sure you think it’s silly.”

“Not at all,” Draco said, surprising himself by his own vehemence. “Plenty of people get cosmetic magical procedures all the time and don’t know themselves half as well as you seem to.”

Potter smiled then, an awkward, crooked, impossibly charming smile.

“The answer’s yes, by the way.”

“Yes?”

“To your,” Draco coughed, “earlier proposal.”

“Oh,” Potter said. “Brilliant.” His smile widened, and Draco felt himself transported to Hogwarts, watching Potter from afar and pretending to hate him and then not being able to stop thinking about him. His younger self, he thought, would be horrified. And thrilled.

-

They ended up going back to Draco’s rather than Harry’s, primarily because the press didn’t know where Draco lived. 

“I don’t know how you stand it, honestly,” Draco said. “They’re honestly awful people.” Like all others acquitted after being on trial for war crimes, Draco had signed a complex non-disclosure agreement upon his release assuring that he would testify at whatever follow-up trials ensued (a good solid year of Draco’s life had been spent following that particular part of the agreement), in exchange for which his living space would remain strictly confidential and free of nosy journalists – unless he took up his old Death-Eatering ways again. That didn’t stop them lurking outside the gates of Malfoy Manor, or outside St. Mungo’s when he first started training there.

“I don’t know if this is offensive, but I swear Rita Skeeter gives me the willies more than Voldemort ever did.”

Draco laughed for a full minute, leaning against his threadbare couch cushions with Potter’s arm around him. “She is a heinous cow,” he agreed. “Not as scary as Aunt Bellatrix, though.”

“I’ll give you that,” Potter agreed. “Remind me to tell you about the time Hermione kept her trapped in a jar.”

Draco wanted to ask who Granger kept trapped in a jar, Skeeter or Aunt Bella, and which of those would be a more impressive feat, all things considered, but before he could, Potter had leaned over and kissed him.

Potter had chapped lips. He always had, even when they were in school, from Quidditch and saving the world and just not caring very much about it, Draco presumes. He was also surprisingly muscular for someone so wiry, boxing Draco in against one of the sofa’s arms.

He drew away, and his eyes were doing that blasted thing again where they seemed to express a million different things at the same time and Draco just wanted to stare into them for hours. 

Realizing he was probably in significantly more trouble than he had reckoned with that morning, Draco drew Potter close and kissed him again, deeply, properly. He let his arms sling around Potter’s neck as Potter’s weight settled comfortably between his spread legs. 

When he drew a hand through Potter’s hair, Potter hummed.

When Potter settled a big, warm hand at Draco’s hip, Draco gasped and pulled away. “Potter-“

“Could we…” Potter trailed off, glasses a bit crooked and just generally damnably adorable. “You could call me Harry, I think.”

“Oh,” Draco said. “Yes, that would be appropriate. You could…you could do the same?”

“What, call you Harry? Bit egotistical, no?”

Draco flicked his ear. “Prat.”

Harry stuck his tongue out. “Got you into bed, didn’t I?”

With all the dignity he could muster, Draco said, “No, I rather think you have gotten me to sofa.”

“Mm,” Harry agreed, “and whatever shall we do about that?”

Draco leaned up for another kiss, and they lost themselves for pleasant minutes, kissing right there on the sofa laying almost completely on top of each other. Draco had never exactly known what made a good kisser, but he liked the way Harry kissed him, languid and long, rubbing their tongues together and pulling away again. These sorts of thing could never be dignified, all saliva-shiny lips and disheveled clothing, and Draco’s personal policy was to enjoy them all the more for that.

Eventually, Harry switched to little kisses down his neck, his jaw, his earlobes.

“How would you feel about taking off your shirt?” Draco asked.

“Generally quite positive,” Harry said. “You?”

“The same.”

They were both smiling as they stripped off their shirts, and Merlin, Harry had definitely not stayed as scrawny as he was in school. He would never be as brawny as the stockier Weasleys, or as tall as the lanky ones, but he was…

“Bloody gorgeous,” Draco murmured, and sucked a nipple into his mouth.

“Christ almighty,” Harry gasped above him, groin suddenly pressed rather firmly against Draco’s own. Draco had about a half a second to consider how quaint it was to moan about Jesus when he had been quite eclipsed as a sorcerer less than five hundred years later, and then he was moaning himself.

“D’you want…” Harry murmured.

“Bed,” Draco said decisively. “I want bed.”

They stumbled thence, Harry’s hair even more of a disaster zone than usual. Draco found he quite liked it when he was the cause.

It was only when they were standing before the bed, Draco’s unmade little bed in his unmade little flat, that he was overcome with awkwardness. They had been enemies almost all their lives, after all, and only reached a sort of stalemate in the last five years. And here Harry, savior of the Wizarding World Harry, was standing in Draco’s bedroom, half naked, staring at him as if he had never seen him before.

“You…” Harry trailed off, his fingers running lightly along the scars on Draco’s chest.

“I…” Draco cleared his throat. “I know what you mean about not using magic to change the things that make you who you are.”

Draco found himself pressed up against the wall all of a sudden, about five feet and seven inches of Harry Potter pressed up against him and kissing the living daylights out of him, running all over his skin.

“What do you want?” Harry asked heatedly against his mouth, not giving him time to answer before kissing him again.

“I…” Draco couldn’t think of a good answer that wasn’t something ridiculous or embarrassing, only _I want everything_ or possibly _I want to gag myself on your cock until you considering coming back tomorrow, and then possibly every other day after that_. Instead, he kissed Harry again.

Harry pulled back after a few more moments, assessing, heated. “Alright, I’ll tell you what I want. I want to kneel on that bed of yours, I want you to open me up for you, and then I want to ride you till we both come.”

Draco groaned.

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

There was medical grad lubricant in the bedside drawer, and Draco’s hands were absolutely not shaking as he poured it over his fingers. Harry squirmed on the mattress, arse wiggling enticingly.

“This is one area,” he gasped as Draco’s index finger slid in, “where I really don’t mind magical shortcuts.”

“Impatient,” Draco tutted, and began to massage his finger against Harry’s inner walls. When he added a second, Harry pushed back and made an odd keening noise.

“Alright?” Draco asked, pausing.

“ _Yes_ ,” Harry groaned. 

He proceeded to make an absolutely indecent amount of noise as Draco fucked him with his fingers, pressing back against it and groaning for it. It was probably the most gratifying experience of Draco’s life.

Eventually, he deemed the preparation sufficient. Well, no, he deemed the preparation sufficient and then kept going for a while to hear Harry groan and beg a little.

Wiping his lube-covered hand surreptitiously on the sheets, Draco said, “I believe you said something about riding me.”

Harry tackled him. There was no other word for it. He pushed Draco back against the mattress, rucking the sheets and blankets all out of order and perhaps leaving a bruise on his shoulder. Draco _loved_ it. When Harry cast a wandless, wordless sheathing spell on his prick and it settled hot and tingling around him, he squirmed. 

And then Harry Potter slowly settled himself down on his cock.

Draco started counting Flobberworms in his head.

Having Harry on top had the dual benefit of Draco having to do a lot less work, and of being able to watch the bunch and release of the muscles in his thighs as he slowly raised himself and dropped onto Draco’s cock.

Draco abandoned himself to it, moaning ridiculously, chanting Harry’s name. Harry was resting on his palms, either side of Draco’s head as he worked himself up and down slowly, groaning a bit, and from there it was easy to grasp his hips, to rock up in counterpoint to Harry’s slow catch and release.

“Oh, yes,” Harry breathed as Draco pushed up into him. “More.”

“Here, lean back,” Draco said, pushing Harry to sit upright, so he was leaning back on his heels. Then he thrust up.

Harry let out a long, guttural noise. Draco did it again, and Harry grabbed his own cock. “Not gonna last like that,” he warned, but he clearly didn’t care, grinding himself back, rubbing Draco’s cock against that spot inside him. 

Draco sped up his thrusts, slowly losing his grip on reality, sliding into sweat, and heat, and the burn of his own thighs. He was aware of Harry’s string of “yesyesyesyes” as he pumped himself, aware of the sudden clench around him, aware of Harry’s come shooting warm and sticky onto his belly, and at last aware of the curl of his own toes and the blissful heat surrounding his cock and the surge of pleasure as he came and came and came into Harry.

He wasn’t really one to pass out after sex, particularly anal. He always felt too disgusting, too animal and unclean, and usually went to shower while whoever it was vanished conveniently. This was an impossible feat when his partner chose to continue lying on top of him, after. 

“Harry?” he asked tentatively.

“Mm,” Harry said. He waved a lazy hand and Draco felt the wave of a gentle _scourgify_ clear his skin of any substances he might not want there. It was a truly shocking level of power and control, and Draco would definitely think about that some more when he could stand to become hard again.

“Sleep now,” Harry said, and tucked himself up against Draco’s side as though this were totally normal behavior. But it had been a long day, even before Harry had waltzed into it, and Draco was asleep before he knew it.

-

Draco’s alarm rang at half past six, and he groaned. 

Harry groaned next to him, and Draco froze. He had been expecting, he supposed, that Harry would vanish sometime in the night, that this would be a pleasant memory and one of the other healers would take care of Harry’s scrapes and bruises and shattered bones and ruptured organs in future.

But there he was, still stealing most of Draco’s pillow, hair sticking in more directions than Draco was aware existed, blinking blearily. “Time’s it?”

“Six thirty.”

Harry groaned. “Bloody hell.”

“Sorry, I’ve got an early shift.”

“No, no.” Harry pushed himself halfway upright. “I’m due at work at eight myself. I just bloody hate mornings.”

Perhaps, Draco wanted to suggest, they could do this at the weekend next time. But he didn’t dare suggest a next time, let alone a lazy Sunday morning next next time.

“Tell you what,” Harry said. “Invite me round on Saturday and I’ll make you Sunday brunch.”

Draco felt as if the air had been punched out of him. “I’d like that,” he said. 

“Great,” Harry yawned. “It’s a date.”

-

He had a date. With bloody Harry Potter. Draco was well aware it was the sixth (or seventh, if that first night counted) such date in three weeks, and he could do well to stop thinking about it so much, but he had absolutely no frame of reference for the casual interest and care Harry continued to show him. He had done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

“Look,” Harry had said on date number five, cooking something that smelled delicious in the one pan Draco owned. “I figure we can keep talking about all the shit we did to each other in school and all the ways that was fucked up, or we could just…remember that being sixteen is shite?”

“I mean, you’re not wrong about that. I just…I don’t want to wake up to an empty bed when you remember what I did. Who I am.”

“You are not the things you did,” Harry said firmly. “And you’ve clearly been making amends since then. Without asking for attention or thanks. That says a lot. Plus,” he grinned cheekily. “You’re a bloody amazing shag.”

He plated up whatever it was he’d been cooking (“It’s just spag bol, honestly,” as if anyone ever made Bolognese sauce from scratch in Draco’s presence ever), and Draco moaned around the first bite. “You’re a bloody amazing cook.”

“Thanks.”

“How’d you learn?”

Harry shrugged. “My relatives had me doing a lot of the household chores.”

“Weren’t you just a child then?”

“Children can cook.”

Draco couldn’t think of anything to say. He’d always envisioned Harry’s life much like his own, coddled in the lap of luxury, the only trying element the crushing weight of expectations. 

“The Dursleys don’t especially like magic,” Harry explained. “They tended to keep me useful or out of sight. Still, learned some things. Magic is a shite way to clean out a clogged sink.”

“That…” Draco ate another forkful. “That sounds pretty awful.”

“I didn’t really know better. I mean I knew most kids didn’t sleep under the stairs, but I didn’t really know much about what I was missing, family-wise, till Hogwarts.”

Draco had never exactly been a physically demonstrative person before, or an emotionally demonstrative one. In fact, he was pretty sure Pansy barked the words “emotionally stunted cockhead” at him when they split up in sixth year. He had no frame of reference and had largely used his own arrogance to get by in life. There was something about Harry though, now that he was just Harry, something soft and vulnerable that Draco wanted intensely, instinctively to protect.

He stood, then, walked over to Harry’s side of the table and wrapped his arms around him.

Harry chuckled. “I’m not, y’know, traumatized or anything, they just didn’t like me.”

“You will accept hugs,” Draco said loftily, “when I am benevolent enough to bestow them.”

Harry subsided at that, being the absolute worst sort of cuddler. Most likely due to his childhood of awful deprivation. Draco resolved to touch him more often, to let him manhandle Draco the way he saw fit after sex, when they were both drowsy and loose-limbed, until they were wrapped around each other and ridiculously, unnecessarily warm.

-

Hermione Granger showed up one day to take Draco to lunch.

She folded her hands delicately over her bowl of minestrone – honestly the most boring choice of meal anyone could ever have possibly made, and every bone in Draco’s cultured body was begging to mock her. “I just really think we should at least try to get along. For Harry.”

“Right,” Draco said. “Right.” He had, up until that precise moment, not exactly known that Harry had told anyone. He certainly hadn’t. Not that he had much of anyone to tell, besides Mother. 

Once again proving he absolutely did not deserve Harry.

They both remained silent for a rather uncomfortably long time, Draco picking at his salad.

“I know I owe you apologies,” he said at length.

“Apologies, plural?”

He shrugged. “I can think of at least five separate occasions worth apologizing for.”

She smiled, just a bit. “Are you going to, then?”

Salad was a really shit lunch, Draco decided, but Harry had been spoiling him with home-cooked food for nearly two months now, and he figured he’d better start watching his figure at some point. Now it seemed like Harry wasn’t exactly going to run for the hills. Merlin only knew why.

“It seems paltry,” Draco began, after fortifying himself with a slightly limp mushroom, “to offer a blanket apology for everything I did from age eleven onward. I’m sure you’re intelligent enough to know…well…oh, this is coming out wrong.”

“No, no,” she said, gesticulating with her spoon, “keep going.”

Draco sighed. He supposed he would have to sacrifice a lot at the altar of dignity for Harry. He wondered why it bothered him so little. “I’m never going to know,” he said, “how much of my behavior I can blame my parents for. It’s always going to sound like an excuse. But perhaps you’ll take it as an explanation for my terrible decision-making skills aged eleven through eighteen. And, well, all the racial slurs. Anyway. I’m sorry for being an idiot.”

He took a deep breath. “I have no explanations or apologies for what. What happened at the Manor. None that could make up for it.”

He was about ready to throw a few galleons on the table and run out the door before she hit him (it may have been years ago, but you don’t forget being thirteen and being hit by a _girl_ ). But she looked over at him, and smiled. “I’m sorry, too, you know.”

“Whatever for?” he asked.

“We never even tried to understand you,” she said. 

He snorted. “Why should you have? I never deserved it.”

“It’s not about deserving anything,” she said mildly. “We were all just children, at Hogwarts, even if the things we ended up having to do…well. You may have been a right tosser, but you were under pressure from all sorts of people to act like that, and later on to do things for, for him.”

She didn’t say ‘Voldemort’ as easily as Harry, still, all these years later.

“Harry knew, you know,” she said. “In sixth year. He knew something was happening with you, was sure of it. He followed you around all the time. And do you know, he was right to. We told him he was being an idiot, obsessing over you, but he was right, and if we had seen past our own noses and tried to help you, maybe things could have been different.”

“As much as I wish I could have been swayed then,” Draco said, “not even Dumbledore could do it.”

Hermione snorted.

Draco shot her his best quizzical glance. 

“Dumbledore is…not my favorite person,” she said. “Ask Harry about him sometime if you want to hear the hero worship.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I may have to get back to you on that.”

“Duly noted.” She ate another spoonful. “Look, are we quite settled on the past being the past and bygones being bygones and all that?”

“If you are. I still don’t see how you could, but-“

“Draco.” She could really be quite firm when she wanted to be. “Nobody likes to dwell. And nobody likes self-flagellation. I appreciate your apology, and I think it was actually rather sensitive of you. Do let’s move on.”

“Alright.”

“Excellent. Listen, I find myself in need of a discrete mediwizard’s advice.”

“Ah,” Draco said. At last, something that wasn’t about feelings. “That, I can offer.”

“I realize this may not be your area of specialty, but there are some things a Hogwarts education really does not cover.” She said it with the steely tone of someone dead set on changing that particular issue. “What can you tell me about wizarding pregnancies?”

His eyebrows shot up. “Anything specific?”

“Yes,” she said. “Bloody morning sickness.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s why you ordered that ghastly soup.”

“It’s not ghastly, it’s a perfectly traditional Italian-“

“Dishwater, yes, I am well aware.”

“Snob.”

“Naturally. Wizarding pregnancies do have a few key differences to muggle ones, you’re right about that. The baby isn’t just using your caloric intake to feed itself, its magic is also feeding on yours. You’ve probably been more tired than usual lately?”

“Yes,” Hermione said instantly, and Draco suddenly recognized that she was a lot paler than she usually was, that her hair was a little less perfectly stowed away. 

“We usually recommend cutting back a little on work and magic practice,” he said, as neutrally as he could. Everyone knew what long hours important people in the Ministry worked. Hermione was one of the most important. “It won’t necessarily harm the baby to keep going at your usual pace, but it leaves less reserves for you. And really, the last thing you want to be with a newborn baby is exhausted.”

“That makes sense,” Hermione said, grimacing. “And the morning sickness?”

“How far along are you?”

“About ten weeks,” she said, rubbing her stomach. “I’m not…I’ve been to see a muggle doctor, she said everything was fine, and she gave me vitamins and things I’m supposed to be taking. That’s not…”

“That’s fine,” Draco said. “Good, even. A lot of wizards and witches think you can just spell away any illness. That will in fact harm the baby. There are some potions – strictly herbal, I promise – that help a lot with the stronger symptoms and help you keep your strength up. I imagine muggle…vitamins, you said? I imagine they’re just not quite strong enough and lacking in some magical components. I’ll get you a batch if you come back to St. Mungo’s with me. I’m afraid I have no idea how it will interact with the muggle remedies you’re taking. There’s been shamefully little study in that area.”

“Thanks,” she said. “D’you know why?”

“Common wisdom has it that muggle remedies don’t work on wizards because they don’t treat the magic in our blood and bones or what have you, and wizard remedies don’t work on muggles because they haven’t got magic to heal.”

Hermione frowned. “That doesn’t sound terribly scientific. Or true.”

“It’s almost certainly neither,” Draco agreed. “I find an Ibuprofen much more effective for a hangover than a Pepper-Up Potion, and I have definitely seen wizards heal muggles' broken bones. There just hasn’t been anyone terribly interested in taking a whole lot of different medicines to see if it’ll make them well or more sick.”

“Ah, so it’s a research ethics issue.”

“In part. That, and the gag on any muggle-wizard joint projects.”

Draco ate the last of his salad slowly, having saved a nice big clump of parmesan and a cherry tomato for the end. “Is there any particular reason you haven’t been to see a mediwizard yet?”

Hermione sighed, deeply.

“I don’t mean to pry,” Draco said. “You’ve been to see someone, and what you’ve said about your symptoms hasn’t sounded dangerous; you’re well within your rights to stay away from St. Mungo’s. Just curious.”

“Are there any working mums in the Wizarding World?” Hermione asked at length.

“I…” Draco trailed off, thinking of his mother and her friends. “Almost certainly.”

“Because I don’t know any,” she continued. “I _like_ my job. I think I’m good at it. I want a family, but I don’t want to spend my whole life enchanting things to knit and cook for me and fretting over my children.”

“Ah,” Draco said.

“And there’s the whole media circus, they rarely leave us alone for more than a month at a time. I don’t really want them knowing, yet. Until…well, until I’m ready, I suppose. I don’t _think_ Ron expects me to stay home with the baby or anything, but his mother, much as I love her, certainly will.”

Draco was beginning to feel distinctly under-prepared for this conversation. “You do have options, you know,” he said, drawing on the spiel he had learned for his rotation in the mago-gynecology ward. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want.”

She gave him a real smile, then, a proper smile, not exhausted or polite, and Draco remembered when she had had buck teeth and how Harry missed them a little, and suddenly, he did too. “You’re very kind,” she observed, which was not a character fault he’d ever been accused of before. “I do want this baby. I want it a lot. I just want it on my terms, and I’m a little scared. There are just so many things I still don’t know about the Wizarding World. Do they have Kindergarten here?”

“Probably?” he hazarded, not quite knowing what that meant. “There’s quite a good crèche system, especially for Ministry employees. I was in a playgroup until I was five or six.”

“Thank Merlin,” she said.

“They really should teach you more about our world before they expect you to join it,” Draco mused. “It’s quite ridiculous to expect you to arrive at Hogwarts, all of eleven, and know to ask minute details about infrastructure no one will think to explain.”

“I know,” Hermione said. She had that gleam again, that gleam in her eye, that said _I can fix this_. “I’ve been trying to get a mandatory program for muggle-borns going called Wizard Studies, where they teach you things like this. It can’t be that we’re all just left to muddle through.”

-

Draco got home later than Harry that evening, because he’d missed so much time over lunch. He was greeted by being instantly pushed against the closing front door and Harry sinking to his knees.

Harry was greatly gifted in a wide variety of disciplines, certainly, but his skills in this area were possibly Draco’s favorite. He was hard in less than a minute, writhing against Harry’s firm grip on his hips as Harry sucked wet kisses down the side of his cock.

It wasn’t that Harry had any particular amount of finesse; he stuffed about as much of Draco’s prick in his mouth as would fit, ran his tongue in random patterns across the tip, jerked the rest with his fist. It was just so reliably, deliciously _good_ , the way every time Harry touched him like this, Draco felt cherished somehow, felt worthwhile, felt so good.

He never lasted terribly long. 

This time, Harry was so single-minded about it, they didn’t leave the front door until Draco was grabbing his shoulders, groaning, spilling and jerking in Harry’s mouth, messing up his lovely hair. His knees were shaking, and he slid down to sit, back still against the door. Harry didn’t even try to kiss him, knowing how he felt about semen after he’d just come.

He made an attempt at Harry’s trousers, but was blocked off. 

“Later,” Harry grinned. “I’ve got dinner in the oven.”

“Oh. Well. Thanks for the surprise?”

“You deserved it.”

“That my reward for playing nice with Granger?”

Harry did kiss him then, on the cheek. “You’re not a dog, dear,” he said, standing up and heading for the kitchen, and Draco wondered when exactly he had started being “dear” when Harry was feeling sarky. “It just makes me happy when other people can see how good you are.”

Perhaps it was because he felt a little attacked and a little like a good dog whether or not Harry intended it, but as he followed Harry through his tiny apartment, he said, “Granger told me to ask you about Dumbledore.”

Harry sighed. “This again.”

Draco had almost begun regretting asking at all when Harry continued. “Dumbledore was a great man,” he said. “He really was. He knew it all from the start, and that gives you a pretty big responsibility. You know about the prophecy?”

“I knew one existed,” Draco said. He thought of endless hours in Malfoy manor, cold and scared and listening to Voldemort rant on and on about that godforsaken prophecy. He remembers his father being shipped off to Azkaban for what seemed like forever after trying to retrieve it, he remembers being alone with his mother and Lord Voldemort and a million darkly-dressed, dour-faced men, and being scared out of his mind while pretending he was one of them.

“’Neither can live while the other survives’”, Harry quoted. “Dumbledore knew, from the beginning. He had to make sure I would be ready, he didn’t have a choice.”

“So he raised you to be slaughtered,” Draco said slowly. “And he didn’t tell you.”

Harry sighed again. “One lunch with Hermione and you’re already taking her side.”

“She didn’t even tell me what her side was,” Draco said. “I just heard you describe a war general, not a great man.”

“He was both,” Harry said stubbornly. 

“It sounds like he used you,” Draco said, “and like he knew you would cling to the first adult figure to not treat you like dirt.”

“Well what would you know,” Harry said, almost evenly, “you couldn’t even kill him.”

Draco frowned and said nothing.

“Look,” Harry said, “I am just so sick of people who weren’t there and didn’t know telling me how I’m supposed to feel about my own life.”

“I’m not telling you how you’re supposed to-“

“Yeah, but you think you’re right and I’m just an idiot orphan who didn’t know any better. I’m not some pity case.”

“Well, you certainly treat me like one.” Draco hadn’t meant to say it, but there it was, out on the table like the freshly grated cheese Harry had prepared to go with dinner, and he suddenly realized he was about to start crying.

“Fuck this,” Harry said, and stormed out the door. 

In the minutes after Harry left, Draco didn’t know what to do with himself.

He took dinner out of the oven to stop it burning, but he couldn’t even think of eating it. He considered getting drunk, but he had work in the morning. He considered curling into a ball and crying, and discarded it because he couldn’t seem to work up the depth of emotion. He was just sitting at the kitchen table, staring at his hands and the beautiful spinach lasagna, wondering why it felt like there was a layer of cotton between the rest of the world and himself when Harry came back.

“Hi,” Harry said, and Draco abruptly remembered he had a key and was probably here to bring it back and to pick up his things.

How had he missed Harry practically moving in in the last few months?

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, and Draco felt the layer of cotton intensifying into a sort of buzzing in his ears. “I’m not very good at keeping a hold on my temper.”

“Me neither,” Draco said.

“I don’t want us to…I know it’s a cliché, but I don’t want us to go to bed angry.”

“You mean you’re not leaving?” Draco asked, feeling like the buzzing from his ears had moved on to his lips.

Harry gave him an exasperated look. “Of course not. I’m sure this is a shit time to say it, but I do love you, you know.”

“I…me too, that is, you, I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Harry said, sitting down beside Draco and taking his hand. “Look, I think we should probably talk about things. You know. The war and all that. I suppose Dumbledore. We may be older and wiser, but the past isn’t going to just vanish because we like each other now.”

“No, I know that,” Draco said. “I agree. I just…it’s so hard to talk about. And to think about.”

“I know,” Harry said, smiling. “And I don’t pity you. I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

“I don’t,” Draco cleared his throat. “I mean, mostly. I shouldn’t have said that. I just don’t understand why you would be here. Why you would want to be here. I’m not much good for you.”

“You,” Harry said, in one of his rare moments of all-encompassing boyish charm, “are excellent for me. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“I deserve to,” Draco said.

“No. I absolutely forbid it.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, really.”

Draco smiled a little. “I guess if you forbid it, then.”

“Quite right. So, would you like to? To talk?”

Draco ducked his head. “Could we…could we lie down to talk? Just, it’s…” he didn’t know how to explain how much safer he would feel in the dark, pressed against Harry under the covers.

Harry, bless his heart, just said, “yes, of course.”

And so they found themselves there, in Draco’s slightly-too-narrow bed, lying together, Draco with his head on Harry’s shoulder in part so he could feel warm and loved and protected and in part so he didn’t have to meet Harry’s eyes. They talked.

First, Draco talked, figuring he might never have the courage again. He told Harry about how cold his house had been after Voldemort took up residence, how cold his father had become towards him. How it felt like being under enemy siege once Lucius was in Azkaban, how Draco had seen the Dark Lord’s allies punished and killed for failing to deliver, his enemies tortured slowly to death, had seen his mother grow paler and shakier, start drinking wine for breakfast and stop speaking for herself. How he had known that none of this was the glory his father had always described the Dark Lord’s first rise as, none of it was the power and righteousness he had imagined it to be. How he had not seen any other choices than to sign over his life and his allegiance to protect his mother, how he had been so sure he would find no welcome with Dumbledore or Harry, and had also been so sure he wouldn’t want it if he got it, until it was all too late.

“I don’t know if it was just nostalgia or if Father really believed Voldemort would make a better world,” Draco said. “I think he might have just been cruel and enjoyed inflicting…doing what you do, as a Death Eater.”

“Was he ever cruel to you?” Harry asked, but his tone wasn’t judging and his arm was still wrapped tight around Draco. 

“Not physically,” Draco said, and then found he abruptly could say no more about it.

He only realized he was shaking when Harry said, “Shh, shh, it’s alright. D’you – would you like to stop?”

“No, no.” Draco said. “Just, could you talk for a while?”

“Sure,” Harry said, and told Draco about sleeping in a tent for months on end, which sounded rather like another form of cruel and unusual torture to Draco.

“So, no camping holidays for us, then,” Harry laughed.

Draco sniffed. “I should think not.”

Harry’s tone shifted a little, when he talked about losing Sirius, and Remus, about those first grown men who had been kind to him. Whom he had trusted, even though he knew they only saw his parents in him. He told Draco, finally, about Dumbledore.

“I know she’s right,” he said at length, “Hermione, I mean. About him. About him using me and lying to me. But I hope…I mean, I think he still cared. About me. A little that is. I just can’t stand every single one of my memories being about the war and about me being the chosen one.”

“I’m sorry I started all this,” Draco said. “I didn’t know it was this complicated.”

“Don’t be,” Harry stroked through his hair. “I’m sorry we fought, but I’m not sorry we’re talking about it.”

“Well, then.” Draco said.

They fell asleep like that, eventually, and Draco woke with a crick in his neck and an empty stomach in the middle of the night. Harry reheated his lasagna and they ate it out of the baking tray in their pants before going back to bed. 

When Draco’s blasted alarm rang in the morning, he didn’t feel the layer of cotton anymore.

-

Things felt fragile in the weeks after that. Not like Harry would suddenly up and vanish, which had been Draco’s constant fear beforehand. More like this…this relationship (no matter how hard Draco found believing that Harry Potter actually wanted that with him) was a little sapling that needed nurture.

It certainly wasn’t Harry who seemed fragile, because in the week after their fight, he was admitted to St. Mungo’s three separate times with broken bones, hex wounds and, once, a micropixie infestation in his left ear.

“Do you know,” Draco asked, while Harry was immobilized during the pixie extraction process, “how often you’ve been here since we started dating?”

Harry winced. “Would you believe I just like seeing you?”

“As flattering as that is, you don’t need to hurt yourself to do it. Twenty-seven, incidentally.”

“Well, it’s been what, five months now? That’s an average of-“

“That’s an average of, if you were someone else’s boyfriend I would think you’re being abused.”

“Oh. Well, you know, being an Auror is dangerous.”

“And yet,” Draco said, crossing his arms, “Most of them seem to live to retirement. I’ve only seen Ron here when he’s been in with Hermione, why exactly is that? Is he not in the same division?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“But?”

“They’ve got a baby on the way, I’m not going to ask him to do things that might be dangerous.”

“And your other, numerous, colleagues?”

Harry looked like he might want to squirm a little. In all fairness, Draco had insider information. Harry had been unconscious when he’d been brought in by a livid Ronald Weasley, who had, in the last month or so, become used to Harry coming round for dinner with Draco in tow. When Draco had attempted to offer an apology that carefully didn’t mention the years of feuding between their families, Ron had been startlingly magnanimous.

“Look, Hermione reckons you’re alright. Says you’re good for Harry, and she likes talking shop with you. What she says works for me as well.”

“Well,” Draco said. “Thanks, I guess.”

“No worries,” Ron said pleasantly. “If you hurt Harry, I will throw a meaner punch than ‘Mione, though. Just so you know.”

“Fair enough.”

After that, they’d settled into a friendly sort of distance that Hermione and Harry were actively trying to destroy by unsubtly mentioning Quidditch as a conversation topic frequently.

When he’d brought Harry in, Ron had told him in no uncertain terms it was Harry’s own fault. “He has to chase after every lead himself, he’s not good at calling for back-up and he doesn’t tell anyone in the office what he’s up to. If he weren’t the bleeding greatest wizard of our blighting century, he’d be dead by now.”

Draco felt fairly confident in reading a riot act after that.

“I was just following a lead,” Harry said. “I couldn’t have known it would end up like this.”

“Ah yes,” Draco said. “Unlike the past twenty-seven times, when you definitely could have.”

“You’ve been talking to Ron,” Harry said.

“Yes,” Draco said.

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

Harry said nothing for a while as pixies slowly drained out of his ear.

“Look,” Draco said, sitting down next to him. “I understand you not exactly trusting Ministry employees, but do you admit it’s a little difficult when you’re working on a team full of them?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, “I suppose.”

“It’s just, I’d like you alive for a while longer yet. I haven’t introduced you to my mother yet.”

“We’ve met.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Harry sighed. “I know.”

Neither of them mentioned it again for a while, but Harry only ended up in hospital twice in the next month.

-

Two months later, at a casual dinner at Ron and Hermione’s with a few other assorted Gryffindors in attendance, Draco started to understand. He had been mostly focused on not scaring Neville too much – they had seen each other a few times, crossing paths in the doorway to Hermione’s office or when Harry floo-called him to talk about his wedding plans with Hannah Abbott, for which Harry had been elected best man. He was clearly an incredibly solid bloke, and their relationship thusfar added yet another regret for Draco to his neverending list of childhood misdeeds, since Neville tended to keep his distance and go a little peaky and nervous around the edges when Draco got too sarcastic. 

He had been carefully engaging in a conversation about the medicinal uses of certain herbs, and the medical benefits of vegetarian potions as opposed to ones heavily relying on more traditional ingredients involving dead amphibians. He’d even made Neville laugh, once. Neville had been saying, “I’ve gotten a lot better with potions, actually, now I understand more about herb craft.”

Draco had answered, “I think you would have been fine at it in school, if Severus had bothered to teach it properly instead of scaring everyone half to death,” and Neville had chuckled wryly. Draco counted it as a success.

When he tuned back in to Harry’s conversation next to him, he and Ron and Hermione were reminiscing about an afternoon in first year, spent lurking in front of the professor’s lounge trying to find an adult they could trust to take them seriously and not summon Lord Voldemort.

Hermione was laughing about something she had told Professor Flitwick – something about her score on the charms exam that year – when Harry revealed to the rest of the group that it had, of course, been pointless, and no one but the three eleven-year-olds had been available to foil Voldemort’s plan, because Dumbledore had fucked off to the Ministry.

“It really says a lot about Voldemort,” Ginny Weasley said, “how consistently his plans got foiled by teenagers.”

“You mean like the time he possessed you for a full year and didn’t even manage to kill Mrs. Norris?” Ron snickered.

“That was quite memorable,” Ginny agreed.

“Excuse me,” Draco said, feeling cotton wool creep up on him again, as it sometimes did when the war was mentioned. “I don’t remember that?”

“Oh,” Ginny said. She was lovely, and fierce, and Draco was terrified of her. Harry had assured him several times they had broken up long before he and Draco started seeing each other, but still. Knowing your boyfriend’s ex was the star chaser of the Holyhead Harpies and a war hero was a little daunting.

“You know about the horcruxes, right?”

Draco nodded, suppressing the little queasy feeling he always got when they were mentioned. He suspected Harry and his friends didn’t exactly know much about horcruxes, just that they were made by killing. But Draco’s father had known something about how Voldemort had made himself immortal, and he had explained the concept to Draco in excruciating detail after his second year at Hogwarts, not leaving out any of the more unpleasant aspects. It took great skill, he had claimed, to burn the magic and the life out of someone so precisely that everything they had been became your own to use. To store.

“The first one was Tom Riddle’s diary,” Ginny said. “Do you remember our dads fighting at Flourish and Blott’s that one time?”

Draco nodded, suddenly fearing this track of the conversation. The buzzing in his ears was back again.

“Your father had it,” she said, “and he slipped it in with my schoolbooks. Tom used me to open the Chamber of Secrets that year.”

The buzzing had reached Draco’s ears, his nose, his mouth. Distantly, he heard himself say, “Excuse me,” and then he went to vomit in Hermione and Ron’s bathroom.

All the feeling of cotton wool, of distance, of buzzing left him for long, awful minutes, kneeling in front of the toilet. Lucius was just a cruel man after all. He imagined, for a moment, if he had befriended Harry in first year. If he had brought Harry home on summer hols. What manner of strange and tragic accident would Lucius have invented to kill Harry then? To deliver him to Voldemort? 

Ginny came to find him after an interminable period of time in which nothing but the pounding of his own heartbeat in Draco’s ears existed. “Harry wanted to come,” she said. “I thought I’d best speak to you first. I’m sorry.”

“What on earth,” Draco croaked, “do you possibly have to be sorry for. I’m the one who should-“

“Shh.” She said firmly. “I’m sorry to have brought it up right after dinner, at the very least.”

Draco grimaced.

Ginny sat down on the rim of the bathtub. “Do you still see your father?” she asked.

“He’s in Azkaban,” Draco said, which wasn’t really an answer. He had the right to visit. He hadn’t used it in four years. 

“Yes,” Ginny said. “I spent a long time wishing he could be punished for what he did to me. I guess he has been.”

“Not enough,” Draco said. “You were eleven.”

“I was,” Ginny agreed. “But I recovered. Kids bounce back fast, at that age. The Tom in the diary, he was still Tom, he wasn’t Voldemort yet. He had all these little teenage woes, still there, and he was really very convincing. But I think that made him easier to resist. Because he still had to work so hard at convincing me. Seducing me, a bit, really.”

Draco shuddered. “Later on,” he said, “later on, Voldemort didn’t need to convince because he could force. I think he lost the touch for it.”

“Quite,” Ginny said. “It’s very hard to be seduced by a man with no nose.”

Draco giggled, feeling a little loopy. “Tell that to my aunt Bella.”

“My mum killed her, so.”

They both laughed some more.

“We don’t take it lightly, you know,” Ginny said. “I know it sounds like we’re joking, but.”

“No, I know,” Draco said. “It’s not that at all. I just…you don’t give yourself enough credit. That basilisk didn’t catch a single person or cat without a reflective surface handy. That’s no coincidence.”

“Tom didn’t want Hogwarts to shut down,” she pointed out. “He was obsessed with it.”

“He probably wanted Dumbledore sacked. Those mandrakes ruined.”

“Naturally,” Ginny said.

“And you didn’t. He was operating the Chamber – the basilisk – through you, and you didn’t let him do what he could have done.”

“Well,” Ginny said. “I had no idea what I was doing and I was too scared to tell anyone.”

“Imagine what would have happened if my father gave me that book.”

“You’d be dead,” she said bluntly. “Tom would have killed you to come back to life, and Harry might not have been able to stop him. Lucius wouldn’t have wanted that.”

Privately, Draco wasn’t so sure. 

“Merlin,” he said. “There wasn’t a single adult in Hogwarts who gave enough of a shit to see what was going on, was there.”

“McGonagall, maybe,” Ginny said. “Flitwick, maybe. When you asked them for kindness, they gave it. I didn’t. I’ll never know now.”

And suddenly, it came screaming into view for Draco. Why Hermione was dead-set on changing the world. Why Harry couldn’t follow orders and wouldn’t trust his boss with a new lead. Neither would he, if no one had ever listened to him as a child.

Harry spent the rest of the evening fussing over him, making him tea and tucking him under blankets. He had talked Draco into buying a telly, since he lived in a muggle flat and could use it, and convinced him it was practically magical. Draco was inclined to agree after watching about two hours of mindless, soothing noise.

“It was just a little shock,” Draco said uselessly, sipping his second cup of fennel tea.

“Let me take care of you,” Harry said, and Draco was aware he would be taken care of whether he wanted it or not. The path of least resistance seemed wiser.

“Have you ever thought about a different career path?” He asked Harry idly, as the twelfth episode of a comedy talk show flashed across the screen.

Harry shrugged, a little uncomfortably. “I’m a bit certain Kingsley’s going to have to fire me from the Aurors sooner a later.”

“You don’t sound too broken up about that.”

“Wizards are weird about jobs,” Harry said. “In the muggle world, most people don’t do the same things their whole lives. And it’s not like I imagined it, anyway. I’m not like I imagined I would be.”

“What would you rather do?” Draco asked.

“I’ve been thinking about working with Hermione, a little,” Harry said. “You know, joining her on that Wizard Studies program. There’s been some talk about adapting the training for Hogwarts professors, too. And early childcare. Bringing in some more accountability. D’you know Voldemort nearly became a Hogwarts professor? The only vote on the faculty that stopped him was Dumbledore’s.”

“Hm.” Draco hummed. “Would he have been a better or worse teacher than Severus?”

“We’ll never know,” Harry chuckled. “But yeah. I was thinking of going in that direction. Charity work. Improving Wizard-Muggle relations. Using my stupid name for something good.”

“That sounds good,” Draco said. 

“Oh, you think so?” Harry asked.

“Mhm. I mean, worst comes to worst, I can always have you as my kept man.”

Harry snorted. “You do realize I’m independently wealthy and have my own house?”

Draco waved a hand idly. “Eh, you’re always here all the same. Anyway, don’t destroy my dream of having you waiting for me when I get home, having you cook and clean for me.”

“I do that anyway.”

“It’s all part of my crafty plan.”

“I’m sure. Here, lean against me, I’ll give you a shoulder rub.

Draco sighed. “I’m not dying, love, I just had a bit of a shock.”

“Let me.”

Draco let him.

**Author's Note:**

> So, warnings for:
> 
> -I guess for PTSD? I hesitate to call it that, because I'm not a medical or psychiatric professional, I've just absorbed information through popular culture, but mostly just warning for people dealing with the lingering effects of traumatic events.  
> -implied/referenced child abuse - both the Dursley's treatment of Harry, as well as implied in terms of Draco and Lucius's relationship and for Ginny's storyline in Chamber of Secrets  
> -One vomiting scene. It's super vague, though, guys, I can't do vomit, it's too squicky.  
> -Talking about all the fun things Voldemort did, incl. Horcruxes and mind torture. Little bit of implied sexuality in there, although when Ginny talks about "seduction", to me she means it more metaphorically than literally. I leave it up to you how metaphorical Draco is about the forcing thing.  
> -Mention of canonical character deaths.  
> -There is sex in this fic. Happy, positive sex. Not traumatic. But it's there.
> 
> Thank you very much for reading! I hope you enjoyed my little trip into Thinking Too Much About This land.   
> Oh also there is some mild Snape bashing but like I don't think that deserves a warning sorry.


End file.
